Not an April Fools Joke: Trainz for iPad

Ever since the Apple II days, I’ve been a flight sim­u­lat­or geek. I’ve always been inter­ested in avi­ation, but due to my less-than-per­fect eye­sight, a career as a pilot wasn’t in the cards. But that didn’t dim my interest in avi­ation. And giv­en my interest in com­puters & tech­no­logy, it seemed nat­ur­al that I’d grav­it­ate toward flight sims.

Which is why I can recog­nize the pas­sion of folks who are inter­ested in Train Sim­u­lat­ors. True, I don’t ‘get’ that interest or pas­sion, but I can recog­nize and appre­ci­ate it when I see it.

And that’s why I’m tak­ing the plunge later today and pick­ing up Trainz, an iPad Train Sim­u­lat­or (when I’m on Wi-Fi and not 3G, it’s a 136MB down­load!). It also helps that it was on sale for $.99 (down from the usu­al $4.99) Maybe I’ll learn some­thing about someone else’s pas­sion!

The com­pany line

Based on the suc­cess­ful PC fran­chise, TRAINZ Sim­u­lat­or arrives on iPad and is com­ing very soon to Android!

Build and oper­ate the rail­road of your dreams.

Trainz Sim­u­lat­or for iPad includes everything you need to build and oper­ate your own dream rail­road. You can build a fun lay­out in minutes, faith­fully recre­ate a steam rail­road from days gone by or devel­op a fully fledged pro­to­typ­ic­al route; the choice is yours.

The Video
As you’ll see, it’s not only a train sim­u­lat­or, it’s actu­ally a train lay­out sim­u­lat­or. About 1⁄2 way through the video you’ll see you’ve got the abil­ity to cre­ate your world, build­ing the ter­rain, lakes, etc. Very cool little app. And on sale this week­end for less than the cost of that cof­fee you’re drink­ing right now